by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, January 3, 2006 3:37 P.M. EST

Cynicism by Rote
Maybe we're a masochist for watching "Meet the Press," but it often provides a revealing window into the center-left conventional wisdom inside the Beltway. Here is a fascinating comment from Sunday's episode, from Jon Meacham, Newsweek's managing editor, who'd just been asked by Tim Russert what was the biggest story of 2005:

I think Iraq, and I think, somewhat to Bill [Safire]'s point about an angle on it, is the issue of trust and the questions about the prewar intelligence, the questions about the conduct of the war. In an interesting way to me, for this generation coming of political consciousness, they're coming to consciousness when there are many, many questions about the competence of the government in Katrina, the competence of the government in terms of intelligence.

But there's not the good part which happened in the '60s. There's not a civil rights movement. There's not a race to the moon, where things are--show what government can do in a positive way, and I think this has been a difficult year for government as an idea.

And I think that the president, who has chosen to project power in this way, to use Richard Haass's phrase, as a "war of choice," he has done so in a way that now has raised a lot of questions about fundamental competence of the government, both abroad and at home, whether it's in Baghdad or in New Orleans.

But Meacham supports the troops! Seriously, he does. Here's what he had to say about Iraq later in the program:

I just think we're in the midst of a vast historical change there, obviously, and one of the things that people in our business have to be careful about is either on a daily or hourly or weekly cycle assigning blame or credit and spinning arrows. We are in the midst of projecting power to change a region. As Gen. [Colin] Powell once said, when Americans go to fight, all we've ever asked for is the ground in which to bury our dead.

The--arguably the most undercovered story of this year was the simple courage of the--not simple, but the courage of the young men and women who have gone to fight for these values. And it is values, it's not territory. It's not oil, despite what cynics say.

With this, we agree wholeheartedly. But isn't there a--well, let's be gentle and call it a "tension"--between the two Meacham comments? First we hear that government is completely incompetent, that it can't do anything right and isn't even trying to do anything worthwhile. Then we hear a tribute to the brave troops and their idealistic mission.

Presumably Meacham realizes that the military is part of the government. And we must acknowledge that his second statement is not the sort of cynical "I support the troops" disclaimer you hear from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators as they trash everything the troops are doing. Meacham says he believes in American ideals, and there's no reason to doubt his sincerity.

It's the first statement that seems out of place, like a rote recital of what world-weary journalists are supposed to believe. A healthy skepticism of government is vital to a free press. But the kind of unmitigated cynicism Meacham expresses in the first quote--which for decades has been the dominant view of the journalistic establishment, at least when Republicans are in the White House--is corrosive to the country, and even more so to the press itself.

Military Says Septuagenarians Can't Enlist Anyhow
"U.S. Rep. Murtha Says He Wouldn't Join Military Now"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 3

'And We've Got Better Hare'
The Energizer Bunny of American politics is still going, the Associated Press reports:

[John Kerry*] the [haughty, French-looking] Massachusetts Democrat [who by the way served in Vietnam], defeated by [President] Bush in 2004, insists it is far too early to talk about the 2008 race, but some analysts assume he has already positioning himself for another shot at the White House. . . .

"Obviously, Kerry has all but said he wants another crack at the thing," said Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at South Carolina's Francis Marion University. "He's going to make a second try." . . .

"He's continuing the fight he began in 2004," said Kerry spokesman David Wade. "He wants to make it very clear he's a fighter who is going to continue to fight for his agenda." . . 

Despite such political spadework, Kerry can expect an uphill fight in 2008. . . . In 2008, Democrats will probably be eager for a fresh face, said Thigpen, citing New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead in early polls and her ability to raise large sums of money.

"There's not a lot of fire out there for Kerry," he said.

Hillary Clinton is a "fresh face"? John Kerry is a "fighter"? Heck, why don't the Dems just nominate Howard Dean and call him a "sober statesman"?

* Oh well, there goes our New Year's resolution to stop paying attention to him.

Yeah, That's the Ticket . . .
The good news is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's harebrained head of state, now says the Holocaust happened after all. The bad news is--well, we'll let the Associated Press take it from here:

Ahmadinejad . . . has now charged that European countries sought to complete the genocide by establishing Israel, a Jewish state in the midst of Muslim countries. . . .

"Don't you think that continuation of genocide by expelling Jews from Europe was one of [the Europeans'] aims in creating a regime of occupiers of [Jerusalem]?" the official Islamic Republic News agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

"Isn't that an important question?"

Ahmadinejad said Europeans had decided to create a "Jewish camp" as the best means for ridding the continent of Jews and said the camp, Israel, now enjoyed support from the United States and Europe in what he termed the slaughter of Muslims.

Talk about chutzpah. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Europe has 2.3 million Jews, and 11 of the 20 countries with the biggest Jewish populations are in Europe: Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Germany, Belarus, Hungary, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Moldova.

By contrast, among predominately Muslim countries, the one with the biggest Jewish population is Iran itself, which places 25th with an estimated 20,405 Jews. This is less than one-fifth of Germany's Jewish population, and other estimates (such as this one) have the number much smaller.

The only other majority-Muslim countries to crack the top 50 are Turkey (17,415 Jews), Azerbaijan (7,911), Morocco (5,236) and Kazakhstan (4,100). The depopulation of Jews from the Arab and Muslim worlds is largely a postwar phenomenon; according to the JVL, Iraq's Jewish population had declined to around 100 by 2003 from 150,000 in 1948:

After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime.

In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship. A year later, however, the property of Jews who emigrated was frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country. . . .

In 1952, Iraq's government barred Jews from emigrating and publicly hanged two Jews after falsely charging them with hurling a bomb at the Baghdad office of the U.S. Information Agency.

With the rise of competing Ba'ath factions in 1963, additional restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. The sale of property was forbidden and all Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards. After the Six-Day War, more repressive measures were imposed: Jewish property was expropriated; Jewish bank accounts were frozen; Jews were dismissed from public posts; businesses were shut; trading permits were cancelled; telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods of time or restricted to the cities.

Persecution was at its worst at the end of 1968. Scores were jailed upon the discovery of a local "spy ring" composed of Jewish businessmen. Fourteen men--eleven of them Jews--were sentenced to death in staged trials and hanged in the public squares of Baghdad; others died of torture. On January 27, 1969, Baghdad Radio called upon Iraqis to "come and enjoy the feast." Some 500,000 men, women and children paraded and danced past the scaffolds where the bodies of the hanged Jews swung; the mob rhythmically chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to all traitors." This display brought a world-wide public outcry that Radio Baghdad dismissed by declaring: "We hanged spies, but the Jews crucified Christ."

The Jews of Iran have not fared as badly as their Iraqi counterparts, but the mad mullahs have hardly been good for the Jews:

Under the Phalevi Dynasty, established in 1925, the country was secularized and oriented toward the West. This greatly benefited the Jews, who were emancipated and played an important role in the economy and in cultural life. On the eve of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, 80,000 Jews lived in Iran. In the wake of the upheaval, tens of thousands of Jews, especially the wealthy, left the country, leaving behind vast amounts of property.

So it would be more accurate to say that Arab countries since 1948, joined by Iran since 1979, have been following the lead of the Germans of the Nazi era and depopulating themselves of Jews.

She Made It
An update on a story we noted Thursday, from Reuters:

An Iraqi baby with a life-threatening birth defect arrived in the United States on Saturday for medical treatment after being sent by U.S. soldiers who found her during a raid on her family's home.

The baby, three-month-old Noor, was taken by ambulance to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, a pediatric hospital that is donating surgery and other care for the infant, after flying into Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. . . .

"The infant is in good condition, is responsive and smiling and seemingly resting comfortably," the hospital said in a statement after doctors completed an initial evaluation.

Homer Doesn't Exactly Nod, but . . .
A passage from a Thursday New York Times article that we quoted Friday contained a factual error that the Times corrected on the same day (second correction):

An article yesterday about efforts by Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana to repair her reputation referred incorrectly to the Louisiana governor's mansion. It was built in 1963 during the administration of Gov. Jimmy Davis, not in the 1930's by Gov. Huey P. Long.

In another Friday item, we noted that The Wall Street Journal had beaten Reuters by nearly seven years in reporting on coffee made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of small mammals. It turns out that Dave Barry got there even earlier. From a November 1997 Barry column that was reprinted last March:

This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo Bishop. He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to a "private tasting of the highly prized luwak coffee," which "at $300 a pound . . . is one of the most expensive drinks in the world."

The invitation says this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member of the weasel family" that lives on the island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation" occurs and the berry seeds--the coffee beans--come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs. The invitation states: "We wish to pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a rarity."

Or, as Bo Bishop put it: "They're selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound."

Barry paid $37.50 for two ounces of the beans, and the resulting coffee, he says, "tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it."

Hawkeyes Ask Justice Department to Investigate
"Leak Leads Gators to Outback Bowl Win"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 2

A Little Brake Work and It'll Be Just Like New
"Family: Boy, 2, Hit by SUV in Good Condition"--headline, Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), Jan. 3

Here's Hoping It's a Birthday Suit
"Topless Women Plan Suit"--headline, Citizen (Auburn, N.Y.), Dec. 31

And the Cleavage Will Only Get Bigger
"Breast Jobs Divide a Nation"--headline, Age (Melbourne, Australia), Jan. 3

Talk About Your Mad Cows!
"ISU Senior Headed to China to Help 'Exploding' Dairy Industry"--headline, RadioIowa.com, Dec. 30

What's Worse Than Flying Coach?
"Man to Be Sent Back to New Mexico in Explosives Case"--headline, KOB-TV Web site (Albuquerque, N.M.), Dec. 30

No Wonder They're Rebranding

"Intel Launches Marketing Makeover"--headline, BBC Web site, Dec. 30

"Ex-Envoy: British Used Intel After Torture"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 31

Lava? In a Volcano?
"Mount St. Helens' Lava Astounds Scientists"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 30

What a Memory!
"Archbishop of Washington Recalls Last Pope"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 30

This Just In
"Some Soldiers Trying to Get Out of Army"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 31

What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Ask the Expert: A Clean Bedroom Is a Restful Bedroom"--headline, Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wis.), Dec. 31

What Would Men Do Without Scientists?
"Men Are Useless During Childbirth, Scientists Imply"--headline, Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.), Jan. 1

What Would Some Do Without US Studies?
"US Studies Find Antidepressants Work for Some"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 1

What Would We Do Without Poison Control Centers?
"Poison Control Center Urges Careful Handling of Alcohol Near Toddlers"--headline, Windsor Journal (Bristol, Conn.), Dec. 29

Thanks for the Tip!--XXX
"Health Tip: Don't Overschedule Your Kids"--headline, HealthDayNews, Dec. 30

Bad News for the Huxtable Kids
"Experts: Roberts, Alito Side With Cos."--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 1

Bottom Story of the Day
"Merkel Once Worked as Waitress, Biography Reveals"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 3

Yo No Quiero More Chihuahua!
"A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home following a traffic stop," the Associated Press reports from Fremont, Calif.:

The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy's home and rushed the officer in the doorway, said Fremont detective Bill Veteran.

Sounds like the AP Fremont bureau needs to go back to Journalism 101. First lesson: "Dog bites man" isn't news. Later in the same story, though, the AP provides this dispatch from the Porn Belt (Alameda County, Gore by 45.3%):

It was the second bizarre incident in as many hours for the Fremont Police Department. Two hours earlier, a homeowner in Niles reported that an intruder broke into her home and added pornography to her computer.

The woman said she woke up and was startled to see a stranger typing away on her computer. The intruder fled, but left behind an altered screen saver that featured images of "erotic Indian art," Veteran said.

Talk about burying the lead.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: The biggest teachers union gave $65 million in its members' dues to left-liberal groups last year.
• Michael Totten: Iraq isn't the Arab world's first democracy. Lebanon is.
• Dan Glickman: Hollywood is doing just fine.